Homeless Veterans

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 As an adoptee to this county I have always had misguided pictures of the heart and soul of America. The victories of the Spanish American War, the Alamo all sat in my mind like NRA Charlton Heston riding his chariots to victory. WW1 led to the cold and bloody footprints of WW11 and we seem to be engaging in a new corporate/economic sponsored cold war once again.

The bloody trail left behind in all such engagements are the toe prints that Veterans leave behind.

I have always been horrified by how America treated its Vets when they came home. Hard to stay sane or rational when reading about the number that are living in the streets. Worse yet most are picked up on vagrancy charges and imprisoned. No money, no bail. Worse yet many are put into barbaric mental institutions. What a homecoming!

It has been estimated that the newest Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter program, now grounded because of ‘glitches’ would have given EVERY homeless person in America a place to stay. My suggestion being a Peace Core type program to teach these people how to keep a property up, do the finances and shop. God knows, we are bulldozing homes into the ground while the homeless live in culverts.

OKAY, I am talking about the ‘land of the free,’yet Canada and Great Britain are no better!

The following comes from Britain.

A soldier dies after his unemployment was sanctioned. (meaning benefits removed.)

‘David Clapson served 5 years in the army, including two years in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, during the height of the troubles, 16 years with British Telecom, and 8 years with other companies, before becoming a care giver for his sick mother. When his mother went into a home, David turned to the state for help, receiving benefits while he looked for work and taking unpaid work placements.

Then he missed an appointment with their equivalent of the Vet admin. Or DSHS. As a result he was sanctioned and had the £71.70 he relied on was stopped entirely. As a result he couldn’t afford to top up his electricity card, and he ran out of credit. This meant that the fridge where he should have kept his diabetes insulin chilled was not working. Three weeks after his benefits were stopped he died from diabetic ­ketoacidosis – caused by not taking his insulin.”

‘When his body was found, there was very little left to eat in the flat – six tea bags, an out-of-date tin of sardines and a can of tomato soup. His pay-as-you-go mobile phone had just 5p credit left on it and he had only £3.44 in his bank account. An autopsy revealed that his stomach was empty.’
In Great Britain, new regulations, introduced in October 2012, mean that benefits sanctions are being handed out with greater frequency and for longer stretches of time. In 2013, 871,000 people were sanctioned, losing some or all of their benefits payments for a minimum of four weeks, rising to three years in exceptional cases.‘

Does this sound familiar?

It is disgraceful that in this day and age, governments that are supposed to be providing a safety net for people are driving people to food banks, out of homes and putting them at risk of starvation and death.

In our own country DSHS does the same making it difficult for claimants to get benefits and these weasels employed are IMO put under pressure to disenfranchise needy people for the smallest mistake in their claims. Should you not have Internet access or be able to plug quarter after quarter into a paid phone you are out of luck. Mind you, you might not even have a legitimate mailbox to get the terse communications to RESPOND BY !!! The film Maleficence should have characterized these fiends instead.

I would also ask all young people joining the military to ASK for a monetary estimate should they lose any body part. What is an eye worth, a limb or genitalia? Ask for a PRINTOUT before you enlist and keep it stored away. Going in four limbed is not what you might come out as.

In the States re-rehabilitation is a case by case issue. Some get it, some do not. Vet hospitals in rural areas are being shut down as we speak … and if you happen to end up a bit squirrely after your tour, good luck and goodbye.

 homeless

Homeless Man Tearfully Watches As Police Destroy His Shelter

Sam had just one request for police about to destroy the makeshift shelter in the woods he’d built: “Can I watch?”

The video above, showing a visibly shaken Sam become teary-eyed as his home of several years crumbles to the ground, is promoting a new documentary shedding light at the current realities of homelessness in America.

Some of these men and women are VETS and even Michel Obama has spoken out about the plight of 58,000 homeless veterans. And yes, many are arrested for destitution and are jailed or put into mental institutions. See, if you can go through the slide show of these heroes of ours.

For Shame!

© Herb Senft

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